The Tiffany house--I spare you full description--rambled with many a
balcony and addition over that hill which rose like a citadel above
San Francisco. From its Southern windows, one looked clean over the
city, lying outspread below. Even the Call building, highest eminence
piled up by man in that vista, presented its roof to the eye. I can
picture that site no better than by this; Over Judge Tiffany's front
wall hung an apple tree, gnarled, convoluted, by the buffets of the
sea wind. In autumn, when the fruit was ripe, stray apples from this
tree had been seen to tumble from the wall and roll four blocks down
into the Latin quarter.
From the rear, the house looked out on a hedged and sloping garden,
quite old, as gardens go in that land, for a pioneer planted it; and
from the rear gate of that garden it was only a step to the hill
mount. Thence one came out suddenly to the panorama of the Bay,
stretching on three sides; a panorama divided, as by the false panels
of a mural landscape, into three equal marvels. To left, the narrow
gate, a surge like the rush of a river always in its teeth and the
bright ocean, colored like smelt-scales, beyond. In front the Roads,
where all strange crafts from the mysterious Pacific anchored while
they waited their turns at the docks. Both in foreground and
background, this panel changed day by day. It might be whalers from
the Arctic which lay there in the morning, their oils making noisome
the breeze; it might be a fleet of beaten, battered tramp
wind-jammers, panting after their fight about the Horn; it might be
brigs from the South Seas; it might be Pacific steamers, Benicia
scow-schooners, Italian fishing smacks, Chinese junks--it might be any
and all of these together. As for the background, that changed not
every day but every hour what with the shifts of wind, tide and mists.
Now its tinge was a green-gold betraying pollution of those mountain
placers which fed the San Joaquin and the mighty Sacramento. Now it
was blue and ruffled, now black and calm, now slate-gray,--a
mysterious shade this last, so that when the fog began to shoot
lances across the waters, these fleets at anchor by Quarantine wharf
seemed argosies of fairy adventure. Even Tamalpais, the gentle
mountain which rose beyond everything, changed ever with the change in
her veil of mist or fog or rain-rift. The third panel, lying far to
the right, showed first dim mountain ranges and the mouths of mighty
rivers, and then, nearer by, masts, stacks and shipping, fringing the
city roofs.
North into this garden ran a small wing of the Tiffany house. Upon the
death of Alice Gray, Mattie Tiffany had set it apart for Eleanor the
baby. When, after her years with Billy Gray, Eleanor came back, Mattie
had refurnished it for the grown baby. The upper story held her
bedroom and her closets. Below was her own particular living-room.
This opened by a vine-bordered door into the garden, into that path
which led up to the bay view.
* * * * *
Judge Tiffany, sitting within the front window to watch the shimmer of
a pleasant Sunday afternoon on the city roofs below, perceived that
his wife had walked three times to that garden wall which looked down
along the drop of Broadway to the Spanish Church.
The second time that he perceived this phenomenon, his eyes showed
interest; the third he smiled with inner satisfaction and rose to meet
her return as though by accident. He was leaning upon a cane, getting
ease of the sciatica which plagued him.
The Judge had aged during the two years since he opened these events.
He had settled now into the worldly state of a man who rests content
with the warming sun and the bright air which feed life. But the inner
soul, whose depth was his philosophy, whose surface his whimsical
humor--that still burned in his dark blue eyes. Those eyes glistened a
little as he went on to this, his daily sport.
He met her on the piazza. She had raked the rise of Broadway, which
one mounted by two blocks of hen-coop sidewalks; and now she was
inspecting the cross street.
"All the Sherlock Holmes in me," said Judge Tiffany, "tells me that
Miss Eleanor Gray is going to have a caller, and that Mrs. Edward C.
Tiffany is in a state of vicarious perturbation.
"Further," continued Judge Tiffany, dropping his hand upon her arm
with that affectionate gesture which drew all sting his words might
have carried, "this is no common caller. For that young civil engineer
and Mr. Perham the painter and Ned Greene, Mrs. Tiffany never blushes;
but these new attentions to her niece--well, I hope my approach drew
as much blood from her heart to her countenance twenty-five years
ago!"
"I--I _am_ perturbed," said Mattie Tiffany. Running rose-bushes, just
leafing out into their fall greenery, overgrew the pillars beside her.
These she fell to pruning with her hands, so that she turned away her
face.
"I see that discipline is relaxing in this family," said Judge
Tiffany. "Dear, dear, after managing a wife bravely and well for a
quarter century, to fail in one's age! Mattie, he works in my office,
this blush-compelling caller; and I told you when I gave him the
position not to take him up socially for the present!"
"But what was I to do when he telephoned to Eleanor and asked her?"
Mrs. Tiffany turned her head with a turn of her thought. "Did you hear
him telephone--was that how you knew?"
"I'd lose all hold on discipline if I revealed my methods."
Judge Tiffany settled himself in an armchair as one prepared to make
it a long session. "Let's begin at the start. How came he to renew his
acquaintance with Eleanor, and when, and where--and how much had
Mattie Tiffany to do with bringing them together again?"
"Not a thing--truly Edward! Some of Eleanor's slumming with Kate
Waddington and the Masters--they met by accident at a restaurant--Eleanor
asked him. You remember he was taken with her that afternoon just
before she went to Europe--the time he mortified me so dreadfully."
"And the time he attracted my attention," said Judge Tiffany. "And now
behold that youth, who will always get what he wants by frontal
attack, reading my California cases and wearing out my desk with his
feet."
"Do you think he will make a good lawyer?" asked Mattie Tiffany. She
turned full around at this, and the glance she threw into her
husband's face showed more than a casual matchmaker's interest.
"He'll make a good something," said the Judge. "So far as anyone can
judge the race from the start. But that isn't why I have him in the
office. You know how little I care in these days for such practice as
I have left. I tell myself, of course, that it is my lingering
interest in life as a general proposition which made me do it--I am
curious to see before I die how this find of yours is coming out. That
is what I tell myself. Probably in my very inside heart I know that
it's something else."
"What else?" asked Mattie.
"This is one of the hidden things which this experiment is to
discover," said Judge Tiffany. "What made me notice him in the first
place? What made you invite him to tea on the lawn? What has made you
and me and Eleanor remember this chance meeting so long--let me
see--how long was it?"
"A year ago last June," said Mattie. One of her functions in their
partnership was to hold small details always ready to the hand of the
wide-thinking Judge.
"Will he go back on me--that's the question," pursued the Judge.
"Success is probably at the end for him, but he has two ways of
success open. He may go slowly and well, or fast and ill. Road number
one: he stays with my moth-eaten old practice, he refurbishes it, he
earns a partnership; and so to conservative clients and, probably, to
genuine success." He hesitated.
"And the other road?" asked Mrs. Tiffany.
"Oh, that has many by-paths. He is trying one of them already. The
stealthy, invaluable Attwood has told me about it. This Mr. Chester
has made an investment in Richmond lots on information which he had no
right to use. Never mind the details. If he follows that general
direction, it will be a flashy success, a pretty worm-eaten crown of
laurels."
"Like Northrup's," broke in Mrs. Tiffany. That name always jarred on
their ears. Northrup, ex-congressman, flowery Western orator, all
Christian love on the surface, all guile beneath--he had taken to
himself that success which Judge Tiffany might have had but for his
hesitations of conscience. Theirs was a secret resentment. Judge
Tiffany's pride would never have let him show the world one glimmer of
what he felt.
"Suppose he should follow that path--and take up with Northrup," went
on Judge Tiffany. "Mine honorable opponent has use for such young men
as our Mr. Chester will prove himself if he follows that
path--magnetic young men to coax the rabble, young men not too nice on
moral questions. Well, a boy isn't born with honor, any more than he's
born with courage; he grows to it. And God only knows just when the
boy strikes the divide which will turn his course one way or the
other."
"But Edward, you ought to warn him!"
"In the first place, it would do no good to warn one of his age and
temperament. In the second place, it would spoil the experiment--but I
had commanded you to talk, and here I am doing it all. How looked she;
what said he?"
"To-day--just before church--I was hooking up Kate and Eleanor, and he
telephoned."
"Instinct, of course, informing you that it was none other than he at
the other end of the wire?" On another tongue and in another fashion
of speech, this sentence might have been offensive; between them, it
was a part of his perpetual game with her amiable weaknesses.
"If I did listen, it was no more than right. It was what a mother
would have done by Eleanor. I heard her say, 'Good morning Mr.
Chester,' not at all as though she were surprised to have him call up;
and I was really quite disturbed. You had told me not to invite him
here for the present; and I hadn't the slightest reason for knowing
that Eleanor had seen him since she came back from abroad. Her
speaking so familiarly--well, I wondered. But Kate--"
"Oh, she was listening too?"
"Well, I know that she hadn't the excuse for listening that I had; but
I had stopped hooking her up, and it was only natural that she should
listen too. Eleanor said, 'Certainly I shall be in,' and Kate said,
'That's the old friend we met with Mr. Masters last night in the Hotel
Marseillaise. He is prompt!' Rather sharp in Kate, considering what
Eleanor has been doing for her!
"You'd have thought Eleanor had eaten the canary bird when she came
back. Of course, she knew we had been listening. I wish she hadn't.
I'd have liked to see whether she'd have told us then, or waited for
him to surprise us. Kate was sharp again. I wonder if she isn't
envious at bottom? After all Eleanor is so much more a lady! Kate said
again, 'The young man is prompt!'"
Judge Tiffany laughed.
"Oh, that women could dwell together in peace and harmony! Can't you
grant my playmate Miss Waddington a feminine jab or two?"
"Well, she _is_ nice to you!"
"Did it never occur to you as a virtue in her that she puts herself
out to entertain--even, Madame, I flatter myself to fancy--a withered
old codger like me!"
Mrs. Tiffany's first expression flooded her eyes and said, "Is there
anything strange in liking you?" Her second expression set her mouth
hard and said, "What is her object?" Her voice said nothing.
"And behold him now," said Judge Tiffany.
There, indeed, came Bertram Chester, visible over their garden wall as
he toiled up the hen-coop sidewalk. The Judge returned to the house;
Mattie Tiffany settled herself on the piazza with the preen and
flutter of a female thing about to be wooed.
The Tiffany drawing-room, panelled simply in woods, furnished with the
old Sturtevant mahogany, came upon Bertram Chester like a stage
setting as he entered with Mrs. Tiffany. Upstage, burned a driftwood
fire in a low hearth of rough bricks; Judge Tiffany sat there, in a
spindle-backed chair, reading. Across a space broken only by a
painting, a Japanese print or so, and more spindle-backed chairs,
Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning
the leaves on the music-rack, looked over her shoulder at him. She was
in pink that day; the tint of her gown, blending into the tint of her
fresh skin, contrasted magically with the subdued background. Kate,
all in white, sat on a hassock pulling a volume from the low book
shelf. All this came upon Bertram with a soothing sense which he did
not understand in that stage of his development, did not even
formulate.
Kate, tripping across the rugs with a lightness which perfectly
balanced her weight, greeted him first; Eleanor and Judge Tiffany
shook hands with more reserve. And as Bertram settled himself in an
arm-chair before the fire, it was the ready Kate who put him at his
ease by opening fire of conversation.
"Did I tell you, Mrs. Tiffany, about the restaurant which Mr. Chester
found for us last night? such an evening he gave us! Mr. Chester, who
is Madame Loisel--you should have seen her, Judge Tiffany--you'd never
dine at home again. When these young charms fade, I'm going to marry a
French restaurant-keeper and play hostess to the multitude and be just
plump and precious like her. How can you ever get past the counter
with her behind it, Mr. Chester?"
"I'm generally hungry--that's how!" said Bertram Chester.
"That's man for you!" responded Kate. "Judge beloved, if you were a
young man and Eleanor--I'm too modest to mention myself, you see--were
what she'll be at forty, and she were behind a counter, and you before
it, would hunger tear you away? Oh dear, it's such a bore to keep
one's grammar straight!"
"I ask my wife's permission before giving the answer which is in my
heart," said Judge Tiffany.
Eleanor broke into the laugh which followed.
"But I would like to know about Madame Loisel."
"Well, she's certainly a ripe pippin; you've seen that," answered
Bertram, his smile on Eleanor. "And I'd like to know what she's saying
when she parleys French to the garçons. She's all right if she's
feeling right, but I've seen her tear the place up when the service
went bad. I guess she's a square and a pretty good fellow!"
"Tell us more about her--" this from Eleanor.
"About her squareness? Well, there was the time Gentle Willie Purdy
got drunk. We call him Gentle Willie because he isn't, you know. About
three o'clock in the morning, he took the notion it was dinner time
and climbed the side gate to the Hotel Marseillaise and pounded at the
door. He faded out about then, he says. When he woke up, he was laid
out on a couch, with a towel on his head, and Madame was bringing him
black coffee. He tried to thank her after he felt better; and what do
you think she said? 'Meester Purdy, nevaire, nevaire come to eat in
thees place again.' She stayed with it too!"
"Good for her!" said Mrs. Tiffany, reaching for her crewel work.
"Oh, yes," responded Mr. Chester in the uncertain tone of one who
gives assent for politeness without knowing exactly why.
"If I ever depart from the straight and narrow paths and get drunk,
may I have Madame Loisel to hold my head," cried Kate.
The talk ran, then, into conventional channels--the news, the latest
novel, and the season's picking at the ranch. Judge Tiffany dropped
out gradually, and resumed his book; and more and more did Bertram
direct his talk, salted and seasoned with his magnetism, toward
Eleanor. Kate Waddington, left out of the conversation through three
or four exchanges, crossed the room and draped herself on a hassock at
the feet of Judge Tiffany.
"Judge darling," she said in an aside which penetrated to the furthest
corner of the room, "I'm going back to my unsympathetic home before
tea. Don't you think we're well enough chaperoned to go on with our
flirtation just where we left off?"
"Where was I when we were interrupted?" asked Judge Tiffany, leaning
forward.
"Twenty-fourth page, fifth chapter," said Kate. "I was just getting
you jealous and you were trying not to show it. Mr. Chester--oh excuse
me--well, I've broken in now, so I might as well get the reward of my
impoliteness--may I use you to make Judge Tiffany jealous?"
"Sure you can!" answered Bertram.
"Oh, he won't do at all!" Kate was addressing Judge Tiffany again.
"He's entirely too eager. Who would be a good rival anyway, Judge
adored? Let's create one, like the picture of your future husband in a
nickel vaudeville!"
"Eleanor," spoke Mrs. Tiffany, "suppose you show Mr. Chester your end
of the house and our garden--or would you like it, Mr. Chester? We're
rather proud of the garden."
"I'd like it," answered Bertram; and he rose instantly. Mrs. Tiffany
made no move to accompany them; she sat bent over her yarns, her ears
open. And she noticed, at the moment when Bertram made that abrupt
movement from his chair, how Kate hesitated in the middle of a
sentence, as though confused.
The rehearsed flirtation between Kate and Judge Tiffany faded into a
game of jackstones on the floor.
Mrs. Tiffany heard the double footsteps fade down the hall, heard the
garden door open and close. After a short interval, she heard the door
again, and the dim footsteps sounded for but a moment. They had
turned, evidently, into Eleanor's own living room. Would they stop
there, these two, for a talk--yes, her gentle treble, his booming
bass, drifted down the hall. Presently Mrs. Tiffany heard Eleanor's
laugh, followed by his. In that instant, she looked at the jackstone
players by the hearth. Kate, on the crackle of that laugh, had
arrested all motion. A jack which she had tossed in the air, descended
with no hand to stop it. For a moment, Kate held that intent pose;
then,
"Judge wonderful, I'm a paralytic at times. You for twosies." She
swept the jacks towards him with one of her characteristic gestures,
free and yet deft.
A bell rang in the outer hall, and the maid entered.
"Miss Waddington is wanted at the telephone," she announced.
Eleanor, when she saw that her visitor had no intention of rejoining
the party, commanded him to smoke. He rolled a cigarette, Western
fashion, from powdered tobacco and brown paper, and disposed himself
in the window-seat, one leg drawn up under him, his big shoulders
settled comfortably against the wall. Eleanor began to talk fluently,
superficially, with animation. She felt from the first that he was
throwing himself against her barriers, trying to reach at once the
deeper stages of acquaintance. His direct look seemed both to plead
and to command. She outwitted two or three flanking movements before
he took advantage of a pause and charged her entrenchments direct.
"I've said it before, but I'm going to keep on. You are pretty."
"Thank you," she replied; and smiled--mainly at the ingenuousness of
this, although partly at the contrast between her present view of him
and that old memory.
"Oh, it never seems to bother you when I say that," went on Bert
Chester, bending his rather large and compelling black-brown eyes upon
her. "Some girls would get sore, and some would like it; you never pay
any attention. That's one of the ways you're different."
("Heavens--is he making love already--he is sudden!" thought Eleanor
with amusement.)
"You are, you know. I picked you for different the first time I saw
you. I wondered then if you were beautiful--I always knew you had nice
eyes--and it isn't so much that you've changed, as that the longer a
man looks at you the prettier you are."
"Shall we discuss other things than me?" asked Eleanor.
"Why shouldn't we talk about you? I've never had a chance before--just
think, it's the first time ever I saw you alone--even that time on the
ranch a bull chaperoned us!" This minor joke, like every play of his
spirit, gained a hundred times its own inherent effect by sifting
through his personality. She smiled back to his smile at the boyish
ripples about his mouth and eyes.
"You see, it means a lot when a girl sticks in a man's mind that way,"
he continued. "Why, I've carried you around right through my Senior
year at college and my first year out. So of course, it must mean
something."
The open windows of Eleanor's bower looked out upon a bay tree, a
little thing awaiting its slaughter--for shade trees might not grow
too near the windows in San Francisco. It was flopping its
lance-leaves against the panes; puffs of the breeze brought in a
suggestion of its pungency. That magic sense, so closely united with
memory--it brought back a faint impression upon her. Her very panic at
this ghost of old imaginations inspired the inquiry, barbed and
shafted with secret malice:
"How many really nice girls have you known in that time?"
Bertram, sitting in considerable comfort on the window seat, flashed
his eyes across his shoulder to her.
"Oh, a few in my Senior year, not many this year. What's a man going
to do on twelve a week?" She noticed the indelicacy of this, since he
spoke in the house of his employer. But the next sentence from him was
even more startling:
"The last time I was in love was down in High School at Tulare. She's
married a fellow in the salt business now. I guess she was pretty:
anyway, her hair was the color of molasses candy. I wrote a poem to
her the first day I saw her."
"A poem?" asked Eleanor.
"You do well to ask that," said Bertram, throwing on one of those
literary phrases by which, in the midst of his plain, Anglo-Saxon
speech, he was recalling that he was a university man. "It rhymed,
after a fashion."
"You don't know how to be in love until you're older," he went on.
("Even that bay scent brings up only wonder, not emotion; and I can
laugh at him all the way," she thought. Yet in this tiny triumph
Eleanor was not entirely happy. The vision, a little disturbing, a
little shameful, but yet sweet, was quite gone.)
"Tell me about this girl with the molasses hair. She interests me. And
a lot about yourself."
"Oh, I've forgotten most about her long ago. And I've something else
to remember now, I hope. I'd like to talk about myself, though. I'd
like some girl to hear about my ambitions. I really think it would do
me good."
He stopped, as though expecting an answer. None came. He bent his eyes
closer on her and repeated:
"It would!"
And at that moment, a pair of high heels tapped in the doorway, a
cheerful voice called for admission through the portières, and enter
Kate Waddington. Mr. Chester, Eleanor saw, rose to her entrance as one
who has not always risen for women; there was something premeditated
about the movement.
"Mrs. Tiffany said you two were in here," she began in her full, rich
contralto, "and I made so bold, Nell--Mrs. Masters is taking a party
over to their ranch next Sunday. One of her men has disappointed her
and she's just telephoned to give me the commission to fill his place.
Mr. Chester, you are an inspiration sent straight from Heaven. Any
other man, positively any other, would be a second choice--but she
didn't know you when she made up the party, so how could she have
invited you?"
She paused and threw an arch look past Eleanor.
"Sure I'll come!" said Bertram, jarred into the vernacular by his
internal emotion of pleasant surprise. "Sure--I'd be delighted."
"I told Mrs. Masters you'd be the ready accepter," said Kate.
"You're going too, aren't you?" asked Bertram of Eleanor.
"No; I had to decline, I'm sorry to say."
"And I'm sorry; blame sorry." He turned back toward Kate Waddington,
and she, the lightning-minded, read his expression. He had made a
great _faux pas_; he had seemed more eager toward Eleanor, to whom he
owed no gratitude for the invitation, than toward her.
"Would you care to drop in on Mrs. Masters as you go down town to let
her know that you are coming? Or if you wish I'll tell them--I'm going
now--that way." Her tone gave the very slightest hint of pique; her
attitude put a suggestion. The game, plain as day to Eleanor, raised
up in her only a film of resentment. Mainly, she was enjoying the
humor of it.
Bertram rose promptly.
"It is time I was going," he said. "I've enjoyed myself very much,
Miss Gray. If you don't mind, I'd like to come to see you again."
"And I'll get into my things," said Kate.
They all moved toward the door.
Kate passed first; then Eleanor. There hung beside the door-casing a
hook, designed to hold the portière cord. Eleanor brushed too close;
it caught in the lace at her throat. She pulled up with a jerk, gave a
little cry; the lace held fast. She turned--in the wrong direction.
Bertram saw this tiny accident; he sprang forward, caught the lace,
disentangled her. And to do so, he must reach about her so that his
arms, never quite touching her, yet surrounded her as a circle
surrounds its centre. She turned and looked up to thank him, surprised
him, surprised herself, in that position.
And a wave which was fear and loathing and longing and agitation ran
over her with the speed of an electric current, and left her weak.
Her face, with its own sweet inscrutability, showed little change of
expression; but he caught a dullness and then a glitter of her eye, a
heave of her bosom, a catch of her breath. As he stood there, his
great frame towering above her, something which she feared might be
comprehension came into his eyes. And--
"You make a picture--you two there!" called Kate Waddington from
without. The transitory expression in his eyes--Eleanor saw it now
with triumph--was that of one who has thrown a pearl away. But he
followed.
* * * * *
Dining with Mark Heath in the Hotel Marseillaise that night, Bertram
fell into a spell of musing, a visible melancholy uncommon in him; for
his ill-humors, like his laughters, burned short and violent. Mark
Heath--by this time he was growing into a point of view on his chum
and room mate--remarked it with some amusement and more curiosity.
Mark was casting about for an opening, when Bertram anticipated him.
Staring into the dingy wall of the Hotel Marseillaise, past the
laborers, the outcasts, the French cabmen purring over their cabbage
soup, he said in a tone of musings:
"When Bert Chester grows up and gets rich, he'll take unto himself a
wife. We'll live in a big house in the Western Addition with a bay
frontage. It will be furnished with dinky old dull stuff, and those
swell Japanese prints and paintings. And I'll have two autos and a toy
ranch in the country to play with. We'll give little dances in the big
hall downstairs. I'll lead the opening dance with the missus, and then
I'll just take a dance or so with the best looking girls--the ones I
take a special cotton to. I'll have my home sweet home dance with the
missus--" he fell again to musing.
"A man up a tree," said Mark Heath, "would say you were in love."
"I'll be damned--I wonder if that ain't the matter?" said Bertram
Chester.